Theses of the report at the 18th International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties held on the 28-30 of October 2016 in Hanoi, under the theme “Capitalist crisis and imperialist offensive – Strategy and tactics of the Communist and Workers’ Parties in struggle for peace, workers’ and peoples’ rights, socialism”, October 28-29, 2016.

Let me greet all participants of the 18th IMCWP on behalf of Russian Communist Workers’ Party. Let me express our special greetings to the host of the meeting, to the glorious Communist Party of Vietnam.

Our party originates from CPSU. It was found by those communists that overtly resisted Gorbachev and his course in CPSU. First of all we struggled against the movement towards market economy, i.e. towards Capitalism. At the XXVIII Congress of CPSU (1990) in the statement of minority we warned both the party and the people that “the transition to market as a universal system including the markets of capital and labour would mean inevitable sliding down to the growth of capitalist relations. A forced treatment of Socialism with Capitalism carried out contrary to objective processes would not bring increase of production and the improvement of the level of life, but is likely to cause their inevitable fall, to provoke a wide social protest, would lead to heavy suffering of the people…

The party cannot perform Perestroika that has led to serious deterioration of the people’s lives. As to regards Communist party – it is not going to survive this shock and there will be left nobody to defend the goals of the movement”.

This took place under conditions when both Gorbachev and the majority of other representatives of the political elite paid lip service to the ideas of Communism , called themselves Marxists, camouflaged their line of actions by the references to restoration of Lenin’s rules of party life, constructed Socialism with human face. I.e. we know (I can claim that we know this best of all) how all this happened and why CPSU (of Gorbachev) crashed and why USSR was destroyed.

If we wanted to answer very briefly to the question why Soviet power and CPSU were defeated, we would answer as follows: because the power wasn’t Soviet any longer and the party wasn’t communist.

In 2017 there will be centenary of the Great October Socialist Revolution . We’ve all been busy reflecting how to mark this date and how to celebrate it. Sure that we shall mark this day, whereas there nothing special to celebrate as we are in the state of temporary defeat of October Revolution in its Motherland, i.e. we’ve been retreating. The best way for communists to mark this anniversary would be to review and reconsider honestly the fate of their movement in the last century. We should start with the recognition of the fact that communists didn’t always win in their struggle for masses, and that they have been defeated by counterrevolution by this day. We should answer the questions who or what has won, why we were defeated. Was this defeat the final and irreversible event or is this a temporary defeat and the struggle will go on? To put it brief: we should make conclusions from our mistakes. It’s not for nothing that Lenin said “Nothing can destroy us apart from our own mistakes.

If we consider modern communist movement as a whole we’ll have to confess that the lessons haven’t been learnt. We are of the opinion that nowadays opportunism and revisionism have turned from an internal product of communist movement, from a set of biases and errors into a powerful weapon in the hands of Imperialism. The right bias hasn’t gone away with Gorbachev and the destruction of USSR and CPSU in 1991

In Russia the line of Gorbachev is being followed by the party with communist name. The main features of their politics are as follows:

– it’s claimed that the limits for revolutions are up – the country cannot afford any more revolutions;

– it’s not only the concept of proletarian dictatorship that is rejected, but the concept of organized class struggle is rejected as well;

– parliamentarism is recognized as the power of people;

-.adherence to the model of market Socialism;

– support of Russian Orthodox Church, claims regarding its allegedly positive role in the development of people’s spirituality etc.

This is a typical occurrence in the communist movement of the world. To put it simple: there has been taking place the adaptation of the parties to the system of Capitalism while presenting themselves as parliamentary defenders of people’s rights.

This right-wing transformation of communist parties leads to removal of masses from real political participation. Their role is thus limited to the functions of electorate who give their votes to party leaders in the course of elections. Strategy of victory by such opportunistic party reads as follows: they promise working people a success achieved in the course of coming election, whereas political struggle of masses is limited to the struggle for “honest” elections. Such focusing on parliamentary activities only is well remunerated by governments. One of the most typical examples of this occurrence is represented by European Left. These parties don’t recognize any extra-parliamentary forms of struggle, or pay them lip service only while actually hampering them.

We cannot say that there is such thing as the unity of modern communist movement worldwide. One could start with our inability to adopt a joint statement – so great are the differences. Let me bring an example. Chairman of Peoples Republic of China Xi Jinping when meeting with Putin in the course of the BRICS summit in India in October congratulated Russian President on the victory of the party United Russia in the course of parliamentary elections: “Recently there have successfully taken place elections to the new State Duma. Party United Russia has achieved a convincing victory, and this creates solid and firm political foundation for stable development of Russia in the future”.

In fact he congratulates Putin on strengthening of anti-communism, anti-sovietism and capitalism. No comment.

The successes of China in development of economics are very much impressing and are the reason for big respect. Nevertheless this doesn’t mean a success in the construction of Socialism. There is an interesting example of how Lenin treated similar issues:

In the draft program prepared for the II Congress of RSDRP the aims of socialist production were described as “planned organization of social production process aimed at satisfaction of the needs both of whole society as well as of individual needs”. V.I. Lenin objected to such wording: “it’s not accurate. Such satisfaction can be provided by capitalism as well, the difference is that is not granted to all members of society and is not equal”. In the end of the day Lenin managed to change the draft program in the following way: “social revolution of proletariat will destroy the class division of society and liberate the whole oppressed mankind by way of replacing private property for means of production and turnover by the socialized one and introducing planned production process in order to ensure wellbeing and versatile development of all members of society.

Nowadays People’s Republic of China has the second largest number of billionaires in the world whereas Russia is the third. I think that both countries are equally far from the classless society – from communism.

The goal of Socialism is not limited to proclaiming the power of working people at all, the goal is to ensure that working people should have real practical possibility to perform this power. From our point of view the experience of Soviets should be studied and used by all parties. Soviets are the most adequate form of realization of people’s power, organizational form of proletarian dictatorship. The main point is the participation of working masses in the struggle. Initially this should be the issue of taking power, later under Socialism this is their participation in performing the dictatorship of proletariat. Lenin saw it as a universal participation in the control over state… Soviet power is built on the basis of industries – based on plants and factories.

We, RCWP are going to celebrate the centennial anniversary of October Revolution by seeking new ways to develop the struggle. We’ll invite these parties that hasn’t used up their limits for revolutions, that extend their recognition of class struggle up to the recognition of proletarian dictatorship and whose practical activities are based upon workers movement. We in Russia have been attempting the tactics of creating Workers Front.

We see our task in preserving the Marxist-Leninist part of political theory and practice for the sake of future of communist movement that nobody will be able to extinguish.

We lived under Socialism and know for sure that the relations between people were much better, fairer, more unpolluted and honest, much more human. This is something to struggle for!